Cat in a Sack Part I
by Roboticlya
Summary: A group of three ANBU nin, members of an obtuse, mis-matched team known as the 'Wildcard', are known as ones sent on the stranger missions. This mission is no exception. Akane, Hisashi, and their Captain Yuuta find themselves on a mission that seems easy, if strange enough to suit their tastes. Soon enough they come up against the antagonist, a creature of unknown origin...


Cat in a Sack

Part I.

A Naruto Universe FanFiction

_By Roboticlya__, a.k.a. Ro__botic Zamat_

Orignal Characters: Akane (ANBU), Hisashi (ANBU), Yuuta (ANBU)

Disclaimer: I own none of the other characters or settings, etc.

It was in the middle of summer when the temperature had reached the height of what truly was one of the hottest summers on record. The _Land of Fire_ was truly living up to its name and making no balls about it. People were staying indoors as much as possible during the hours of high sun and only ventured outside either during early morning, or late at night and even then the air was stifling. The sky was clear, the air was still, and a fine dust covered everything. The local farmers had been worrying about their crops in the marketplace. Everyone else was simply put out and hoping for a change in weather to arrive soon so they could breathe a little more easily.

Settling into her post just beyond sight of the village, Akane heard the lone, thin wail of some babe in the distance. She wondered where it got the energy from. The heat was so oppressive that it gave the impression of sucking one' s very life out with it. Resisting the urge to wipe her forehead behind her mask, Akane shrugged to herself and returned her attention to the area of wood before her.

Akane was an ANBU. She was dressed much like any of her colleagues were: in nondescript, dark blue ninja garb with a white mask. Covering her own facial features, the mask bore the stylized face of a rat in red paint, giving her a shrewd look, indeed. Hence her nickname of '_Konoha__'__s Tree Ra__t_', a name that some pitied her for, but one which she bore with pride. No animal, after all, could think as well on its feet as a rat could, and Akane was fast gathering fame for being someone who could get almost any job done and get out of even the most hopeless situations. One of the ways most people recognized her, though, was the mass of assorted flowers in her long golden brown hair. Most of these were dried, and pretty much tangled into her hair, but she seemed unbothered by this mass and whenever she passed flowers that impressed her in some way, she never thought twice about adding to the arrangement.

Naturally, Akane was not, of course, the only _nin_ on duty in the forest. It was very rare for a _nin_ to be assigned to any mission alone. It was simply a risk that did not need to be taken, after all. To her right and left were her teammates with whom she usually took assignments with. They encircled a clearing which they were strictly keeping under watch.

The tall lanky gentleman on her left with the mask bearing resemblance to a rabbit was Hisashi. Even though the usual far-way cast of his cornflower blue eyes was that of a poet who was lost mulling about the way his love's hair looked like some sort of animal limb or plant section, this person was resolute, dependable, and capable, even if he was quite an ass and his sense of humor took quite some getting used to. His long black Mohawk of hair fell to the middle of his back in a knot as he crouched in his Rodin-like pose of one deep in thought, which meant that Hisashi was most likely fast asleep _again_. Seriously, there were times when one wondered if the man could ever get his heart-rate up and over 30 beats a minute.

The other member of their team was the short, bald and immensely intense Yuuta with his very wide shoulders prowling up and down irritably to her right like a cornered animal. His fearsome expression, which generally made him look as if he had a cactus permanently lodged up his backside, was hidden from the world at large by an ANBU mask depicting a broadly smiling cat. No one knew why, but this was the reason why he had gotten the name '_Sunny'_, which was about as ironic as a nickname one could get if one took into consideration his general disposition. He was, it was rumored, a person who had no idea what a 'joke' was. His hard brown eyes certainly looked like it.

These two were people Akane considered to be de facto brothers. They generally got along well, which was rather a wonder in itself as a person would have been hard put to find three individuals more extremely unlike each other. They did, however, work in perfect accord. Hisashi was a proficient master of _ninjustu_, with a strong wind element which coincided with his airy, wispy demeanor. Yuuta was a renowned _kenjutsu_ and _fuuinjustu_ specialist with a strong bias towards huge axes and maces, which also said more about his character than not. In theory, the third person on a three-man team should have been a medical ninja. This was a rational and very much necessary protocol that had been introduced by none other than the _Fifth Hokage, Tsunade_. However, even though Akane was about as good with healing _jutsu_ as a fish was with swimming in lava, she was put on this team for no other reason that her innate skills of survival and, not to put too fine a point on it, handling the other two, rather 'individualistic' personalities. Akane was something of a rarity. Not only in her ability to actually get along famously with the two most infamously anti-social lone-wolves currently to be found in the ANBU, but because she was a _mokuton_ user.

Akane was someone who was about as close as one could get to a born psychoanalyst as one could get. It was rather something of a game for her to see what made people 'tick', mentally speaking that is. She had no problems with playing mind games with them for her own amusement when she was bored, either. This was, however, never done for any real purpose of hurting her 'subjects'; her almost insatiable curiosity drove her to figure out how people 'worked'. Even though, she could come off as rather mean at times, people usually had no problem forgiving her after one of her deeply-moving apologies. Due to this 'talent', she had absolutely no problem, in fact she even reveled in being with her teammates. Their personalities, or, as some might put it, their personality _problems_ kept her keen and curious intellect busy without having her forced to resort to experimenting with any innocent passers-by.

Her _mokuton_ ability was just as strange. It was a stranger thing, really. There was no recollection in her family of there having been anyone with this capability. Then again, this skill was one of the most mysterious ones among the _nin_ of _Konoha__gakure_. No one had yet been able to understand just where it stemmed from. Certainly, the _F__irst_ _Hokage_ had possessed it. And there had been one person who had survived being implanted with the genes of the _First_ by the infamous _sanin_ _Orochimaru_. However, Akane was not related to either, though she had always had an affinity with plants, earning her the second nickname of '_Tree Witch_'. She was skeptical about this having anything to do with her _mokuton_, though, as there was no record of either of the before mention gentlemen having had any such thing.

"This is irritating." Yuuta griped into his com tersely, not being able to sit still. It was at times like these that the man was more like nothing else but a crazed terrier who had caught the scent of a fox. "They're late. Do you know how much I hate that?"

Akane darted a look over at his broad, tense form and scratched her flower-ridden hair.

"Only by a few minutes, hun." She returned patiently, the smile in her voice obvious. "I think I read somewhere that there is a 15 minute waiting interval by etiquette, ya know."

Yuuta snorted. Apparently the 'terrier' was not moved by this attempt to calm him.

"Stupid." He snorted. "Why make an appointment at noon, if you're not going to bother arriving until fifteen minutes later?"

"I think those fifteen minutes is there more for circumstances out of the person's ability to calculate for." Akane ventured, fingering her hair thoughtfully. "After all, they could have been caught in a landslide, or a tornado could have impaired their travels, or maybe they simply saw something nice on sale and lost track of the time while shopping?"

This last possibility was the heart-felt confession of someone who was guilty and knew it.

"_Pah_!" Yuuta scoffed, mild joke rolling off him like water off of a moody boulder. "The unforeseen possibilities should also be taken into account. It should not be that difficult."

There was a rustling to their left which told them that Hisashi had woken up. He stretched his long arms and arched to scratch his back.

"Late, are they?" He asked in a manner that immediately brought to mind the picture of a poet asking a deep rhetorical question, such as '_What is the Meaning of Life?_' or '_Is there Life after Death?_' etc.

"You should settle down Yuuta." He added, stifling a yawn. "Or you'll fall and we don't want to scare the poor villagers into thinking there's an earthquake after everything else that's happened."

"Sod you, Hisashi." Yuuta snapped back, growling like a thunderstorm. "I don't even know why you bother coming along. You can sleep at home instead of pussy-footing about like the idiot you are."

"At least I keep up the pre-requirement of a ninja being _quiet_." Hisashi returned, not one to be outdone, very much playing 'fox' to Yuuta's 'terrier'.

"Up until you start snoring." Akane intervened cheekily before the matter escalated, giggling. This giggle did the job; both Yuuta and Hisashi backed off, realizing just how inane the argument was.

"Heads up, kids." Hisashi announced lazily, unperturbed, looking back at the clearing they were watching. "We got a birdie."

Below them, the team of three saw a largish, grayish figure flittering in and out of the patches of sunlight that had managed to filter down through the dense canopy of the forest around the village. The team had been given orders to set up a watch about the perimeter of the small village based on reports coming in about this and another, neighboring village being attacked by an unknown animal. Survivors were rather unclear about just what this animal looked like. Some said it was like a bird, others recalled seeing a wolf, still others were certain it was a snake. One thing they all agreed upon was that it was slender, grey, and caused a horrible amount of damage and casualties. It seemed to have attacked with no intelligent purpose as it took nothing but lives and destroyed some property at random. Nothing was stolen and no back up came to take over the villages after the attack. It was a strange thing also that the creature left no tracks other than the trail of destruction; no fur, no paw-prints, and none of its own blood.

Of course, the team assigned to the job would be these three. No question about it. They were something like the wildcards of the ANBU. In fact, this was their codename: Wildcard. Those missions about which the heads had little to no idea of how to handle, these three misfits were sent in without another thought. It was something the trio were obtusely proud of.

"Looks interesting." Akane commented needlessly, curiosity perked at the strange sight. "I wonder if it is an animal, after all?"

"Hard to be sure." Hisashi replied, turning his masked head, while trying to keep the slinking objective in sight. "It sure moves in a strange way."

"Can't be human." Snapped Yuuta, then thought a bit, eyes narrowing on how the creature moved. "Can it?"

"Could it be a ninja animal?" Akane wondered, moving to a new position to get a better view of the subject. "It moves as fast and as agilely as one, certainly."

The creature was making for the village again, however instead of taking a straight line, albeit sneaking straight line like any other sane animal would, it was all but jumping randomly from one place to another so fast and so unforeseeably, that the _nin_ trailing it simply could not get a fix on it. Only on a great average did its movements gradually take it towards the settlement. It seemed to be an awfully labor-intensive way of getting nowhere fast.

"Ninja animals are supposed to be clever." Yuuta growled in his deep voice. "This one looks as though its having some kind of spasms. Or drunk. Or both."

"Second that, Boss." Agreed Hisashi.

"But it's not thrashing, as such." Akane said, coming around, trying to get a clear view of the creature, knowing her teammates were doing the same. "Or being clumsy. In fact, it's being completely silent."

"Weird." Commented Hisashi, voice filled with curiosity now. "Can you guys see what it is? I sure as hell can't."

"That's a no from me, hun." Returned Akane. "All I can see is a grey shape moving all over the place."

"Bloody blazes, me neither." Returned Yuuta. "Anyone read that _chakra_?"

They all called back a negative. All three ANBU were now circling the creature, trying to get some kind of lock on just what they were dealing with, but coming up with nothing. Being seasoned enough as they were not to run head first into a situation about which they knew nothing about, they were also loath to let this unknown target get any closer to the already ravaged village.

"I'm going in." Akane announced, leaping off her perch above their target with ease and coming down to the ground with the palms of her hands slamming down on the ground.

"_Mokuton!_ _Shichūrō no Jutsu!_" She shouted, pouring some of her deep chakra reserves straight into the ground and maneuvering it towards to target.

At this order, four thick wooden walls sprang up around the randomly jumping grey whatever, and closed it up with an audible _snap_. Standing, she saw that Yuuta and Hisashi had covered the back of the wooden dungeon, weapons at hand, making sure to be at the ready if anything untoward happened.

"Good job, Aka-chan." Yuuta said, taking off his mask. The others did the same.

"Can we get a peek now somehow now?" Asked Hisashi, jumping onto the top of and curiously looking over the monstrous wooden roof for some knothole he could use. Yuuta looked at him distastefully.

"Why do I get the impression that you've done this before?" He asked with deep suspicion.

"Your sister's really cute in her pink nighties." Was the loose quip in reply from above, which made the stout ANBU go stiff with rage, but also made Akane hurriedly try to stop a giggle, hands over her mouth and eyes going bright.

"You get your perverted ass down here and say that to my face!" Yuuta snapped, going red.

"Oh, come on, Yuuta-kun!" Said Akane, getting a good hold of the man's arm. ""You know he's only joking. And your sister wears pink everything, too. No-brainer figuring out her nighties are pink too, ya know, hun?"

This explanation seemed to quiet the irritable _nin_ a little, up until Hisashi decided he had to get one back for the 'perverted' comment.

"Yeah, but her knickers are blue and got this amazing lace, too." He said, not being able to help himself, then ran for it laughing as Yuuta broke free of Akane's grasp and charged him.

Rolling her eyes and the pursuit , Akane scratched her flower-ridden hair and giggled again. The _kunoichi_ then turned her attention to the wooden box, wondering what on Earth she had managed to catch in it. Walking up to it, she rapped an experimental knock on its side. After a moment, this noise was echoed from the inside. Blinking, Akane repeated the sound, only to get the reply back as before. Stepping back and looking over the wooden call she had called forth over critically, she put the palms of her hands against the grain and took a deep breath, pouring her chakra again into the structure. This made the box shudder, then change. The walls became closely-barred windows and long chains writhed and grabbed the occupant and cocooned it securely. Finishing this metamorphism of her creation, Akane stepped closer to the bars and peered inside, then took a shocked breath at what she saw.

Some way off, Yuuta had caught up with Hisashi who was backed up against the trunk of a tree and waving his hands in surrender.

"Come on, Yuuta!" He was saying, trying to reason. Though his cause was not being helped in the least by his laughter. For some reason Yuuta's raging always tickled his funny bone. "You know I was joking, man! I would never play Peeping Tom on your kid sister. Maybe if she were a bit older, sure, but I'm not into kiddies! Honest!"

Somehow this was not having the sought-after effect on the advancing, growling Yuuta.

"I mean, come on!" Hisashi tried again, attempting to rectify the situation, realizing that he had gone a bit too far, but still not being able to help but find the whole thing beyond hilarious. As a result, his pleas were interrupted with chuckles. "Give me some credit, will ya?! She and Akane went shopping and, you know Akane, she told me all about what they bought! I swear! That's all! You gotta believe me, Boss!"

"I'm going to enjoy punching the shit out of you." Yuuta growled threateningly, rolling up the sleeves on his massive arms as he advanced unequivocally.

"Aww, shit, man!" Hisashi said, laughing and taking up a more serious stance. "Well, if ya really wanna fight, ain't no way I'm gonna be backing off, then, I warn ya boyo!"

"I'd send you flying from behind, if you did." Yuuta returned, a rather nasty grin appearing.

The two _nin_ were very much a hair's breath away from jumping at each other's throats, when a shriek filled the air that made them both freeze where they stood. A split second later they were dashing back to where they had left their teammate and the imprisoned creature, their conflict, or rather, their excuse to fight forgotten.

Arriving back, Yuuta and Hisashi found Akane staring stock still into the wooden box with a completely horrified expression on a face that otherwise hardly ever showed anything else than blithe.

"What happened?" Yuuta asked tersely, immediately stepping up menacingly to the box, _kunai_ drawn, while Hisashi sauntered up and poked Akane in the side experimentally, trying to get her attention.

"What's up girlie?" He asked, wondering what was going on. But there was no reply. The _kunoichi_ did not move one iota and gave no sign of having heard a thing. Hisashi frowned at this, though he saw that she was still alive.

"Some sort of _genjutsu_?" Hisashi asked aloud. Yuuta snorted in anger. "Perhaps." Was his reply, staring daggers at the wooden prison, but not seeing anything in it. "Looks like Akane got curious and wanted to have a look. She should know better."

Hisashi shrugged, not looking half as worried as he was. "You can't blame her, really." He said, reasonably. "You know she can't keep her curiosity to herself."

This said, Hisashi placed his two hands on his still teammate's shoulders and sent his own chakra through her body like an ambulance doctor would apply electric shock to bring back a victim of a heart-attack. This was the one real way to revive someone who had fallen foul of a _genjutsu_ attack. _G__enjutsu_ was a technique where the attacked the opponent by focusing on and taking control of the _chakra_ flow in the victim's brain and making them see what they wanted the person to see. However, as hopeless as this complete control seemed to be, it could be broken if another person, or persons forced their own _chakra_ into the system of the victim for a sort, brief burst. Naturally, while the success of this first-aid depended on the strength and ability of the _genjutsu_ caster, it generally worked. As it did now. Akane gave and audible sigh, then collapsed, unconscious. Hisashi caught her before she hit the ground carefully propped her up against a nearby tree.

Yuuta, meanwhile, was casing the wooden casket, walking around it perimeter and trying to figure out what was inside. "I don't know what you are in there, but you had better starting talking and talking fast." He all but snarled. "You ought to have some intelligence, as you can use _genjutsu_. So you should be able to talk. So talk, damn you! What they fury are you and what is your goal?"

Chatty, communicative, forthcoming. None of these could have been used to describe the creature inside the box. Hisashi appeared by Yuuta's side.

"Anything?"

"Not yet. How's Aka-chan?"

"She seems to be fine. The _genjutsu_ ate up her chakra reserves, though. Haven't seen any _genjutsu_ do that before. I can genuinely say that I'm itching to figure this one out, Boss. This is really getting to be one weird mission, even for us."

The two men looked at the box, inside they could see a grey, shapeless figure in the midst of a mass of wooden chains and clamps, being held very firmly. But the shape itself had no real distinct quality, not even being held still in this manner. No head was visible, nor were any limbs apparent.

"This thing is kinda giving me the shits, Boss." Hisashi commented. This was rather surprising, coming from him, as he was well-known to have next to no sense of personal safety and had complete distain for 'playing it safe'. "What the hell it is, huh?"

With this, Hisashi stepped right up close to the bars and peered in, wanting to see something that could be recognizable. A face, a hand, a paw, a tail, anything at all.

"You had better watch it, Hisashi." Yuuta growled. "I'm not going to be catching you if you faint."

"God help me if you did, Boss." Hisashi quipped back, "But don't sweat it. I got it covered."

Yuuta's snort in reply said he believed anything but that, but let him be.

In the centre of the box the grey something quivered as Hisashi leaned in, then emitted a loud, blood-curling scream, or shout, then went still. In another moment, the mass seemed to disintegrate into a fine dust.

The two _nin_ had had to cover their ears at the awful sound, then blinked in surprise at the apparent self-destruction of their prisoner.

"What the blazes?!" Yuuta shouted, eyebrows knitting together furiously.

"Well, that's the end of that, then." Hisashi said, shrugging. "We lost the thing. Eh, no matter. That's not gonna be bugging the villagers here anymore, whatever it was."

Yuuta, on the other hand could not let this go so easily.

"We still have no idea what it was." He mumbled, obviously ticked at the way things had turned out. "If this whatever was the thing that attacked the villages. Our teammate was attacked, and K.O.-ed. Not to mention if there was only one of these whatevers or if there are more."

Hisashi sighed and scratched his head thoughtfully.

"That's still an awful long to-do list there, Boss." He said ruefully, then shrugged. "Alright then, now what? Aka-chan's right out of it. We can't be hauling her around. Not to mention we can't track anything. There ain't nothing to track." He looked at the small, pathetic mound of grey dust in the middle of the wooden cage. "I suppose we ought to be sweeping that shit up in there and bottling it for the geeks at home to analyze. "

Yuuta snorted.

"Then your volunteering to climb in there to do it." He said, nodding at the cage, "As Akane's not awake to break this _jutsu_ for us." Walking back to where Akane was still lying on the ground, he sat next to her, head on his hand, looking even more out of sorts than he generally did. "Take your time." He added.

"Sod you, Boss." Hisashi returned cheerfully, taking a seat beside them, looking at the wooden box. "I might not be as thick as you, but I am taller. Not something that's hard to do, mind you."

This time, however, Yuuta let his teammate's quips slide past him, ignoring them completely.

A few minutes later, Akane stirred, making her fellows immediately turn their attention on her. The _kunoichi's_ hair was even more tangles and filled with a mess of plants than usual, adding grass stalks to her already wide collection of dried flowers. With a groan, she lifted her arms and rubbed her eyes, saying '_pwefsft_!' in no uncertain manner.

Sitting up Akane realized that she was under very close scrutiny. Raising an eyebrow she returned to looks she was being given by her teammates, looking annoyed.

"What's up with the staring, huh?" She asked, mouth looking like a letterbox. "Since when has my sleeping become so interesting, huh?"

"You alright Aka-chan?" Yuuta asked, still looking searchingly to see if there was anything amiss.

"You stop staring like that!" Akane snapped, waving a finger in his face. "You're just as bad as Hisashi, I swear!"

"She's fine, Boss." Hisashi concluded, grinning widely as Yuuta's face contorted at being likened to Hisashi. "You were out of it for a bit there, Akan-chan." He added before Yuuta could answer. "The thing you caught put you in some _genjustu_ or something, no? Did you get a look at it? It sorta was up in smoke when we tried to. What did it looked like? Did it say anything?"

Akane blinked then frowned. She then looked over to the cage behind Hisashi.

"I can't say I remember." She said slowly. "I don't even recall making that, to be honest." She added, pointing to the wooden structure. "But I must have. You guys can't do that, unless you been holding out on us, that is."

"What is the last thing that you remember of today?" Yuuta asked, frown cleaving even deeper into his already craggy face.

"Hmmm…." Akane said thoughtfully, putting a finger to her lips and twirling a lock of her messy hair with another. "I remember sitting on watch, hun. Then seeing the thing in the bushes. Then us trying to see what it was….um…that's about it. Sorry."

The two men exchanged glances.

"Alright, then." Yuuta said, getting to his feet. "Dispel that cage, Akane."

Akane nodded and made a few quick hand-seals, at which the cages shuddered and disappeared in a cloud of white smoke. The grey dust was left behind and was promptly collected by Yuuta into a sealing scroll.


End file.
